Reincarnation: Compelled from Within to Believe

REINCARNATION is “one of the most important issues faced by philosophy, religion and science that have very significant implications to the understanding of human life,” the Reincarnation Research declares.

Theosophy agrees. “Reincarnation used to be a subject confined to religion. Since the 20th century, however, the inquiry has moved into the field of science.

This comes about “as a result of ground-breaking researches about people, particularly children, whose memories of previous lives have been validated by independent investigations,” the site reports.

“Many of these cases involved birthmarks or physical characteristics at birth that matched the manner of death of the claimed previous life. Some of them also could speak an unlearned language but which corresponded to the language learned in the claimed previous life.

“The concept of reincarnation, however, goes against the mainstream doctrines of a number of major religions. This has created conflicts and has led to raging debates on the pros and cons of reincarnation.”

H. P. Blavatsky and her Adept Teachers, Founders of the modern Theosophical Movement, were fully committed to the prime directive of introducing Western civilization to the the twin Eastern doctrines of Reincarnation and Karma.

We are outwardly creatures of but a day; within we are eternal. Learn, then, well the doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation, and teach, practice, promulgate that system of life and thought which alone can save the coming races.

The Reincarnation Recall ofMandy Seabrook

An outstanding story of past life recall that led to evidence one wouldn’t expect to find. Mandy recalled a past life from the time she was young enough to talk. Later she would take her mother and researchers on an evidence discovery mission.

“Past and future lives”

“In order to accept reincarnation or the reality of Tulkus, we need to accept the existence of past and future lives. Sentient beings come to this present life from their previous lives and take rebirth again after death. This kind of continuous rebirth is accepted by all the ancient Indian spiritual traditions and schools of philosophy, except the Charvakas, who were a materialist movement. . . . Therefore, as long as you are a Buddhist, it is necessary to accept past and future rebirth.”

The Dalai LamaDharamsala September 24, 2011

Edward Austrian: The Past Life Memory that Healed Him

“Getting back the memory of other lives is really the whole of the process, and if some people don’t understand certain things it is either because they have not got to that point in their other lives, or because no glimmer of memory has yet come.”

Spiritual Evolution

William Quan Judge was an important figure of the early theosophical movement. In 1875, at the age of 24, he was a co-founder of the Theosophical Society with H. P. Blavatsky and Henry S. Olcott. In his article The Synthesis of Occult Science Judge noted that even theosophists wondered why Mme. Blavatsky laid “so much stress on doctrines like Karma and Reincarnation.”

“It is not alone because these doctrines are easily apprehended and beneficent to individuals, not only because they furnish, as they necessarily do, a solid foundation for ethics, or all human conduct,” he explained,

“but because they are the very key-notes of the higher evolution of man.”

“Without Karma and Reincarnation, evolution is but a fragment; a process whose beginnings are unknown, and whose outcome cannot be discerned — a glimpse of what might be, a hope of what should be.

“But in the light of Karma and Reincarnation evolution becomes the logic of what must be. The links in the chain of being are all filled in, and the circles of reason and of life are complete. Karma gives the eternal law of action, and Reincarnation furnishes the boundless field for its display.”

More Proofs

A Mysterious Power

– William Q. Judge

“There is a mysterious power in these doctrines of karma and reincarnation which at last forces them upon the belief of those who take them up for study.

“Each person is the concentration and result of karma, and is compelled from within to believe.”

“It is due to the fact that the soul is itself the experiencerof rebirth and karma, and has within a clear recollection of both — and rejoices, as it were, when it finds the lower mind taking them up for study.”

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.”

Great post! I’ve been fascinated with reincarnation since my teen years and became even more so when my son was born and started talking about his past lives! I remember watching The Reincarnation of Audrey Rose (a movie from back in the 70s) and went right out to buy the book (because we all know the books are always better!) and started researching the concept, becoming a firm believer the more I learned. I even made it the premise of one of my books and what I found interesting was how many people attacked the book (and me!) because of the reincarnation concept! I don’t believe it goes against Christian dogma to accept this mode of belief but that’s me. We all have our own journeys to travel. To my way of thinking, reincarnation makes sense. Having one life to get it right…it just isn’t enough, especially when a life is very short. The idea that people are condemned forever in hell because they weren’t lucky enough to be exposed to information they needed to “save” them just doesn’t make any sense. None at all! Reincarnation makes everything “fair”. Thanks for such an informative article!

Thanks for your comments Deborah, it’s an honor. A good read on this from Blavatsky’s time by her colleague William Q. Judge is from the Ocean of Theosophy: “Viewing life and its probable object, with all the varied experience possible for man, one must be forced to the conclusion that a single life is not enough for carrying out all that is intended by Nature, to say nothing of what man himself desires to do. . . . One life is not enough for all this. To say that we have but one life here with such possibilities put before us and impossible of development is to make the universe and life a huge and cruel joke …”

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